A central character in your book Telegraph Avenue, Archy Stallings, is the black co-owner of a record store. Did you feel anxious writing from the point of view of a black guy?

While I was actually doing the writing, I didn't have any doubts or anxieties at all. It was only when I wasn't writing--lying in bed at night, thinking about what I had done. The challenge is always the same. Can you imagine what it's like to be somebody else or not?

But race is a charged subject. In the book, there's a white lawyer, Moby, who talks like a...